References On Energy Cost Politics

Tokyo Japan Fears China May Put an End to 'Made in Japan' By James Brooke
New York Times, Nov. 20, 2001 Last spring, Toshiba stopped making televisions
in Japan, turning to its factories in China to supply the market here. Soon
Minolta announced that it was phasing out camera production in Japan and would
import from Shanghai instead.

Just last month, like falling dominoes, several other Japanese manufacturers
announced plans to import bicycles, motorcycles, buses and cellphones from
their Chinese factories.

"We look at China as the most important growth market," said Yukio Shotoku,
overseas managing director for Matsushita Electric, the world's largest consumer
electronics group. His company is closing 11 factories and pushing 8,000 workers
into early retirement in Japan, whose labor costs he described as "the biggest
headache."

Contiains note about how China competes with low energy costs as
well as low labor costs.

There are great disparities in access to modern forms of energy, in particular
in access to electricity. Whilst in the industrialized world per capita consumption
of electricity reaches or exceeds 8000 kWh per capita per year, the same in
the lesser and least developed countries remains low, sometimes even below
400 kWh per capita per year. This fact suggests that the average levels of
consumption between countries can differ by as much as a factor of 20.

The improvement of energy efficiency in production and consumption
has been a continuous part of capitalist progress. Yet, this same capitalist
system winds up causing workers in advanced nations consume an even greater
amount of energy though the expansion of automobile/suburban consumption
model.